Dream Lover. Stacey Keith
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all, he’s a client. I can’t date clients. There are strict rules about that kind of thing. They’d fire me on the spot. I’d never be able to do social work again.”
Jacey twisted open a tube of lipstick and then slid it over her lips. She smacked them together before pooching them out again in the mirror. “Yeah, but it would be plenty stupid, which means you’ll be having a fun adventure. Problem solved.”
April couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Jacey knew better than to suggest such a thing, even if she were joking, which she clearly wasn’t.
“He’s a total jerk, you know,” April said hotly. “I don’t even like him. I like nice men.”
“Do you?” Jacey gave her an enigmatic smile and dropped the lipstick into her purse before Tessa recruited her for a debate about nail polish.
Despite the mild nausea lurching around her stomach, April couldn’t stop worrying about what Jacey had said. What kind of friend was Jacey anyway, shooting her mouth off like that? Dating a client was a violation of every ethical standard April had, even if she wanted to date Brandon, which she didn’t.
Years ago there’d been a caseworker who took up with the father of one of her own clients. The caseworker’s name was Cleo and she was still the subject of scandalized whispers, which was how April came to hear about her. Cleo had been humiliated. Fired. Run out of town.
Rumor had it the man Cleo sacrificed her reputation for recently left her. And not just her reputation. All the work, the training, the opportunity to help others. She’d been stripped of her license and blacklisted in the field. Now, no one knew where she was. The story bothered April so much, she refused to let anyone in the office talk about it.
The van came to a stop and Ryan rapped his knuckles on the window that separated the back from the front. Indignantly, April thought, I like nice men. She did. The boys she’d dated in college were nice. So what if she didn’t let those relationships “go all the way”? Maybe she just wasn’t ready.
“Roxanne, this is your stop,” Ryan said once he’d opened the doors. Roxanne patted his cheek as she clambered out. “Thanks, Sheriff.”
April didn’t like the face pat. She also didn’t like Roxanne, although she should feel sorry for her over the whole breakup thing.
Ryan was decent and honorable and April knew that she hadn’t really given him a chance.
Before he could close the doors, she slid out. The world merry-go-rounded a little, but not too bad. She felt daring and impulsive.
“Hey,” she said.
Ryan looked amused although she didn’t know why. “Hey yourself.”
“I’d better sit up front,” she confessed. “I don’t feel so good.”
He opened the passenger door and helped her inside. His hand was warm and reassuring. “If you’re going to hurl, lean out the window.”
She watched him go around the front and then climb inside. He brought the smell of the night air with him along with a pleasing whiff of aftershave.
I like nice men, she told herself again more forcefully. Ryan wasn’t asking her to marry him, just to go on a date. What if she ended up liking him? What if the only reason she got a little dizzy around Brandon wasn’t because of Brandon, but because Jacey was right and all she really needed was a boyfriend?
Jacey was always right. It was kind of annoying.
“Hey, do you still want to have dinner in San Antonio?” she asked, hoping she didn’t sound too weird asking him that.
Ryan looked at her carefully. Like maybe he was trying to decide if it was her talking or the beer. “Yes, I do.”
I can do this, she thought. I just have to push myself. Underneath the warm haze, she might have been a little afraid, but that was silly, wasn’t it? Ryan wasn’t scary. He had nice hair and he smelled good. All she had to do was say yes.
“Okay, so I thought about it,” she said. “Let’s do this thing.”
Chapter 4
Brandon rolled out of bed, pulled on his jeans, and slid the zipper up. He hunted around his bedroom for the black T-shirt he’d been wearing, but all he could find was a bra, a pair of pink lace panties and a Harley saddlebag latch he’d been looking for. He stuffed it in his back pocket and then kicked his boots out from under the bed.
The woman from the bar turned on her side and gave him a look he recognized as claim staking.
“You gotta go right this red-hot minute?” she asked. “I was hoping we could have dinner…or something.”
He kept prowling around for the shirt, knowing what was probably coming next. Women might be unpredictable in bed—some quiet, some loud, some meek and some that clawed you up like tigresses—but out of bed, they tended to be the same. Brandon didn’t know if he had a groupie here, but sometimes the hard-to-read chicks were the ones you had to watch out for.
“Got shit to do,” he said, flipping the bedcovers and spotting his T-shirt underneath.
The woman made a sound of protest. She shifted to her back so he could see what he was missing out on, and frankly, there was a lot to miss. Brandon let himself drink her in before remembering that his buddy, Doc, was probably here already. Which meant no time to screw around.
She gave him a lazy, sensual look. “You sure? Way I figure, we were just getting started.”
That was his cue to go. “I told you before, there’s nothing to start. I was clear about that. We were a one-time only deal, remember?”
“Yes, but—”
“No ‘yes, but.’ I’m not looking for a relationship, and I’m not changing my mind.”
He caught the sulky expression on her face before he pulled the T-shirt over his head. Her gaze swept his chest before making its way back up to his face again. “Can I call you?”
“I don’t have a phone.” There was a house phone, but he rarely used it. If someone needed to talk to him, he made them call Matthew’s cell. Matthew was a genius at screening his calls.
Speaking of which, where was the kid?
“If I did call, would you remember my name?” she asked, eyes narrowing.
Shit. “Of course.”
“Yeah? What is it?”
Silence. She looked pissed. Truth was, she had a right to be. When he grinned at her, she sat up and snatched her pink lace panties off the bed.
“It’s Shayla, you asshole,” she muttered.
“Got it.”
“You’re a pig, you know that?”
That hot little social worker had called him the same thing tonight. Brandon raked his fingers through his hair and felt a stirring of male pride. It showed that when it came to women, he was the same lone wolf he’d always been, accountable to no one.
Or in his case, the same lone pig.
“You can let yourself out,” he said, glad he’d made her drive her own car over. “Feel free to grab what you need out of the fridge.”
She threw a pillow at him, which skidded harmlessly away. Funny how you could be straight up with a woman, even before the sex, and she would still try to corner you afterwards.
Brandon strode through the kitchen and then down the back steps. He heard the brrrraaaappp of Matthew’s two-stroke dirt bike in the distance and guessed he was out night-riding, probably without his helmet.
Damn the kid for not listening. Brandon felt a familiar surge of love and fear for him. They may have had different fathers, but that had never changed the way he felt about his brother. Family was family. Anybody who messed